OpenAI has begun piloting group chats inside ChatGPT for logged-in users in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, across web, iOS, and Android, and across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. Each group chat can include up to twenty people together with ChatGPT in a single thread for planning, decision-making, and shared projects.
Users start a group from the people icon in any chat and share an invite link, which creates a copied group version while leaving the original one-to-one conversation intact. In these rooms, responses are powered by GPT-5.1 Auto with access to search, file and image upload, image creation, retrieval, and dictation, and only ChatGPT messages count toward usage limits, not human messages.
ChatGPT behaves as a participant instead of replying to every line, deciding when to step in, with an optional mention-only mode where it answers only when called with @ChatGPT. It supports emoji reactions and can reference member profile photos when generating personalized images, while each group can define its own custom instructions for tone, goals, and preferences separate from account-level settings.
The blog post details privacy and control features, including:
- Separate handling of group threads.
- Automatic disabling of personal memory once more than one human is present.
- Private chats and account-level custom instructions are not exposed inside the group.
- Invite links can be reset or deleted.
- Participants other than the creator can be removed.
- Users can delete their own messages for everyone.
- Teen accounts are covered by parental controls plus an under-18 mode that reduces sensitive outputs for the whole group when a minor is present.
OpenAI describes the pilot as a small first step toward shared experiences in ChatGPT and as the beginning of turning ChatGPT into a shared space to collaborate with friends, family, coworkers, and classmates. Official guidance points to trip and dinner planning, event coordination, study groups, home design, and shared work documents where everyone posts links, files, and images while ChatGPT searches, summarizes, and generates content on top of that shared context. For now, the pilot runs only in four countries and only in ChatGPT’s own web and mobile apps, with expansion to further regions and plans planned after the company collects early feedback.
